KMT-CCP collaboration on the Olympics opening?

About the decision of putting Taiwan under ‘C’ rather than ‘T’ in the opening of the 2008 Olympics, a shocking story came out. Officials supposedly involved have denied some those allegations and evaded important questions. However, some believe that the story laid out in the article is too detailed and specific to be fabricated (at least not entirely). If any part of this story was true, the loyalty of Taiwan’s government certainly lied with the other side.

It was revealed in a magazine article[1] that the agreement to make Taiwan march under ‘C’ rather than ‘T’ (after Central African Republic, before China Hong Kong and China Macau) in the opening was made in the meeting between the KMT chairperson, Wo Po-hsiung, and the Chinese leader, Hu Jing-tao on 28th May 2008. Taiwan’s IOC representative, Wu Ching-kuo was said to be present in the discussion as well.

In the beginning of June, Head of Taiwan’s National Security Council, Su Chi, and Deputy Head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, Chang Liang-ren, held a secret meeting with officials from Sports Affairs Council, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) Olympics Committee (OC) to talk those people into accepting this deal. Chinese Taipei OC official, Chen Kuo-yi was not happy with this suggestion at all and therefore contacted China’s OC in Beijing to ask them to follow the established IOC protocol. The interesting thing was that 30 minutes later, before Chen got a response from China, Deputy Head of Mainland Affairs Council, Chang Liang-ren, was on the phone with Chen and questioned why Chen was rocking the boat.

On 18th July, Su Chi invited Chair of Chinese Taipei OC, Tsai Wei-Chen, Head of Sports Affairs Council, Dai Shia-ling, Deputy Head of Sports Affairs Council, Lin Guo-ching, and Deputy Head of Mainland Affairs Council mainly to persuade sports people to adopt ‘a new way of thinking’ about cross strait relations and accept this arrangement. Lin was said to have expressed his disagreement and upset because this would seriously damage Taiwan’s national interest and the athletes’ dignity. However, on 21st July, Wu Ching-guo, Taiwan’s IOC representative, still flew to Switzerland to persuade the IOC to put Taiwan under ‘C’ rather than ‘T’. The intriguing bit was that, on the very same day, when Ma met with Head of Sports Affairs Council, he told Dai that Taiwan should stand firm on ‘T’.

When pressed for answers, Wu Ching-guo blamed it all on the IOC and said it was their ruling. Chang Liang-ren denied having lunch with Lin but confirmed that ‘someone’ did tell the sports sector about the ‘new way of thinking’. He said that he was not at liberty to reveal who this ‘someone’ was. The Presidential Office Spokesperson, Wang Yu-chi confirmed that there was a lunch meeting but said it was simply a routine meeting those officials regularly attend. Wang also said that he did not know much about this and the KMT Press Office denied all the allegations.

Some believe that Ma was actually behind it but was playing a good cop as a cover up; some believe that he’s been ‘played’ by the KMT and Su Chi. However, I have strong doubts that anyone would dare to make such a decision without Ma’s agreement or without him knowing. Ma has a history of playing innocent by saying that he was not told when, in reality, there was no way that he could be not told. The most recent would be the Senkaku Island (Diaoyutai) dispute. Ma said that he was not told at the very beginning and before he was, a civil servant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just went ahead to tell the Coast Guard to retreat after the Coast Guard was already on their way, approaching the Senkaku Island to intervene and rescue. This is clearly not in line with the chain of command and it is very unlikely that something like this does not get reported to the highest level of command (i.e. the Premier and the President, if we still have one, of course…).[2][3] If he really was not told, I would be very worried about Taiwan’s national security and government functioning. Either way, he did not come off well.

If the story was true, any of it, the KMT has been working with the Chinese government to push Taiwan towards China. This again demonstrates the danger of having the unofficial, non-transparent and unaccountable KMT-CCP platform. To date, no one knows what Wu and Hu talked about or agreed in their meetings.

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Taiwan, also known as Formosa, is NOT part of China. The majority of the population see themselves as Taiwanese, NOT Chinese. Taiwan is a democracy and therefore people there do not wish to be ruled by China, a dictatorship with poor human rights record and about 2,000 missiles aiming at Taiwan.